ESEEM of industrial quartz powders: insights into crystal chemistry of Al defects     

Maurizio?Romanelli  Francesco?Di BenedettoEmail author  Laura?Bartali  Massimo?Innocenti  Gabriele?Fornaciai  Giordano?Montegrossi  Luca?A.?Pardi  Alfonso?Zoleo  Fabio?Capacci 《Physics and Chemistry of Minerals》2012,39(6):479-490

A set of raw industrial materials, that is, pure quartz and quartz-rich mixtures, were investigated through electron paramagnetic resonance and electron spin echo-envelope modulation spectroscopies, with the aim of evaluating the effective role played by defect centres and of assessing whether they can be used to monitor changes in the physical properties of quartz powders with reference to their health effects. The obtained results point to two interactions of the Al defect centres with H⁺, hosted in sites within the channels parallel and perpendicular to the c axis of quartz, respectively. These two Al/H⁺ (h_Al) centres exhibit a weak chemical bond, and their relative amounts appear to be modified/controlled by the thermo-mechanical processes underwent by powders. Indeed, a mechanically promoted inter-conversion between the two kinds of site is suggested. As a consequence, the h_Al centres are effective in monitoring even modest activations of powders, through thermal or mechanical processes, and they are also supposed to play a specific, relevant role in quartz reactivity during the considered industrial processes.  相似文献   

Uranium-series isotopes transport in surface,vadose and ground waters at San Marcos uranium bearing basin,Chihuahua, Mexico     

Juan Carlos Burillo Montúfar  Manuel Reyes Cortés  Ignacio Alfonso Reyes Cortés  Ma. Socorro Espino Valdez  Octavio Raúl Hinojosa de la Garza  Diana Pamela Nevárez Ronquillo  Eduardo Herrera Peraza  Marusia Rentería Villalobos  María Elena Montero Cabrera 《Applied Geochemistry》2012

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Glacier recession and human vulnerability in the Yanamarey watershed of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Jeffrey T. Bury  Bryan G. Mark  Jeffrey M. McKenzie  Adam French  Michel Baraer  Kyung In Huh  Marco Alfonso Zapata Luyo  Ricardo Jes��s G��mez L��pez 《Climatic change》2011,105(1-2):179-206

Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, are undergoing rapid retreat, in large part due to climate change. These changes are significantly altering water availability in the region and pose critical risks to local populations that are highly dependent on these resources for livelihoods. We examine these issues through an interdisciplinary and linked evaluation of hydrological change and livelihood vulnerability in the Yanamarey watershed. Physical observations of the Yanamarey glacier show acceleration in frontal retreat at a rate of 8 m decade^???1 since 1970, accompanied by total volume loss on the order of 0.022 km³. Hydrological and hydrochemical analyses document a possible transformation of stream flow over the past decade as the seasonal storage capacity of the glacier has degraded. Recent stream discharge measurements from the proglacial lake below the glacier are more coincident with the highly variable seasonal precipitation than they were during the 1998?C1999 hydrological year. Local household perceptions of glacier recession and seasonal hydrological variability agree with this trend, which is increasing human vulnerability in the watershed. Household case-study survey results demonstrate that shifting water resources, increasing weather extremes and climate-related threats to tourism are all new vectors of vulnerability for household livelihoods.  相似文献   

Performance enhancement of a GIS-based facility location problem using desktop grid infrastructure     

Andrés García García  Carolina Perpiñá  Carlos de Alfonso  Vicente Hernández 《Earth Science Informatics》2013,6(4):199-207

This paper presents the integration of desktop grid infrastructure with GIS technologies, by proposing a parallel resolution method in a generic distributed environment. A case study focused on a discrete facility location problem, in the biomass area, exemplifies the high amount of computing resources (CPU, memory, HDD) required to solve the spatial problem. A comprehensive analysis is undertaken in order to analyse the behaviour of the grid-enabled GIS system. This analysis, consisting of a set of the experiments on the case study, concludes that the desktop grid infrastructure is able to use a commercial GIS system to solve the spatial problem achieving high speedup and computational resource utilization. Particularly, the results of the experiments showed an increase in speedup of fourteen times using sixteen computers and a computational efficiency greater than 87 % compared with the sequential procedure.  相似文献   

Benthic nutrient fluxes along the Laurentian Channel: Impacts on the N budget of the St. Lawrence marine system     

Benoît Thibodeau  Moritz F. Lehmann  Jacqueline Kowarzyk  Alfonso Mucci  Yves Gélinas  Denis Gilbert  Roxane Maranger  Mohammad Alkhatib 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2010

Water column concentrations and benthic fluxes of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and oxygen (DO) were measured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Upper and Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (USLE and LSLE, respectively) to assess the nitrogen (N) budget in the St. Lawrence (SL) system, as well as to elucidate the impact of bottom water hypoxia on fixed-N removal in the LSLE. A severe nitrate deficit, with respect to ambient phosphate concentrations (N*∼−10 μmol L⁻¹), was observed within and in the vicinity of the hypoxic bottom water of the LSLE. Given that DO concentrations in the water column have remained above 50 μmol L⁻¹, nitrate reduction in suboxic sediments, rather than in the water column, is most likely responsible for the removal of fixed N from the SL system. Net nitrate fluxes into the sediments, derived from pore water nitrate concentration gradients, ranged from 190 μmol m⁻² d⁻¹ in the hypoxic western LSLE to 100 μmol m⁻² d⁻¹ in the Gulf. The average total benthic nitrate reduction rate for the Laurentian Channel (LC) is on the order of 690 μmol m⁻² d⁻¹, with coupled nitrification-nitrate reduction accounting for more than 70%. Using average nitrate reduction rates derived from the observed water column nitrate deficit, the annual fixed-N elimination within the three main channels of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and LSLE was estimated at 411 × 10⁶ t N, yielding an almost balanced N budget for the SL marine system.  相似文献   

The ignored but common nemertine Psammamphiporus elongatus from the Galician beaches (Spain), affected by the Prestige oil spill     

Alfonso Herrera-Bachiller  Pedro García-Corrales  Carmen Roldán  & Juan Junoy 《Marine Ecology》2008,29(S1):43-50

Nemerteans have been recorded in several studies of the sandy beaches, but usually these specimens have been only regarded as members of the Phylum, with no attempt at identification at any taxonomic level. This lack of identification is partly because of the sampling procedures used to collect beach macroinfauna. Nemerteans are fragile and need special care. They must be isolated and observed in vivo before using histological procedures, which must be employed for the taxonomical studies. This study deals with a sandy beach hoplonemertean, Psammamphiporus elongatus ( Stephenson 1911 ), only known for seven specimens from the Firth of Clyde (UK). This species is recorded for the first time from the Galician sandy beaches (NW Spain) where it reaches its maximum abundance. The species is described and illustrated and new data on its morphology and ecology are provided. The species was apparently affected by the 'Prestige' oil spill, and would be a good indicator of beach quality.  相似文献   

Dehydroxylation mechanisms in Al/Fe dioctahedral phyllosilicates by quantum mechanical methods with cluster models     

Esther Molina-Montes  Alfonso Hernández-laguna 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2008,72(16):3929-3938

Atomic models involving the dehydroxylation process of dioctahedral phyllosilicates without interlayer charge were used to calculate energies and explore the reaction paths of the possible mechanisms of this reaction at a quantum mechanical level. The geometrical features and electronic structure of a molecular cluster model of two edge-sharing octahedrally coordinated cations coupled to a ring of six silicate tetrahedra was evaluated by ab initio molecular orbital calculations with Hartree-Fock approximation. Two dehydroxylation mechanisms are considered. One mechanism involves two contiguous hydroxyl that are on an octahedron shared edge that joins a pair of octahedral cations. The other model considered involves OH loss from across an octahedral vacant. The substitution effect of Al³⁺ by Fe³⁺ in the octahedral sheet on the activation energy and structural transformations is compared by minimization of the critical points of the Potential Energy Surface (PES) for the reactant, transition state and product along the reaction path of the dehydroxylation process. The calculated energy differences and vibration frequencies are according to previous experimental results. The dehydroxylation mechanism involving OH across the octahedral hole, is less energetically favorable and is endothermic.  相似文献   

Biotic effects of environmental catastrophes at the end of the Cretaceous and early Tertiary: Guembelitria and Heterohelix blooms     

Alfonso Pardo  Gerta Keller 《Cretaceous Research》2008,29(5-6):1058

In this study we report similar biotic response patterns in planktic foraminiferal assemblages, whether in association with volcanism, impacts or climate change at the end of the Cretaceous and early Tertiary. During and after each type of catastrophe two groups dominate high stress assemblages: (1) the small Guembelitria species, which are interpreted as having thrived in eutrophic surface waters where other species rarely survived; and (2) the low oxygen tolerant small Heterohelix species, which thrived at times of an expanding oxygen minimum zone associated with high nutrients and a stratified water column. The ecosystem collapse appears to be primarily the result of high macro- and micronutrient influx (from impacts, volcanism and erosion) leading to eutrophication and phytoplankton blooms (i.e., primary producers) that result in toxic conditions for foraminifera. Once nutrients decrease due to consumption by phytoplankton, the first opportunistic foraminifera, the Guembelitria, appear and graze on phytoplankton, rapidly reproduce (heterochronic acceleration) and increase populations exponentially. With nutrient depletion Guembelitria populations rapidly decrease leading to ecologic niches for other generalists and ecosystem recovery. Small low O₂ tolerant heterohelicid populations mark this second stage, followed by small trochospiral and planispiral species. With further environmental recovery, increasing competition, niche development, and restoration of a well-stratified watermass, oligotrophic conditions are restored opening habitats for large, highly specialized species and a return to normal diverse assemblages. Such highly stressed ecological successions are observed in association with mantle plume volcanism in the Indian Ocean, Andean volcanism in Argentina and shallow inland seas in Egypt and Madagascar during the late Maastrichtian, the K-T impact, volcanism during the early Danian, and intense upwelling and climate extremes. We present a simple model to explain the ecological succession and recovery phases that follow major biotic perturbations.  相似文献   

Geology,fluid inclusion and sulphur isotope characteristics of the El Cobre VHMS deposit,Southern Cuba     

Xiomara Cazañas  Pura Alfonso  Joan Carles Melgarejo  Joaquín Antonio Proenza  Anthony Edward Fallick 《Mineralium Deposita》2008,43(7):805-824

The El Cobre deposit is located in eastern Cuba within the volcanosedimentary sequence of the Sierra Maestra Paleogene arc. The deposit is hosted by tholeiitic basalts, andesites and tuffs and comprises thick stratiform barite and anhydrite bodies, three stratabound disseminated up to massive sulphide bodies produced by silicification and sulphidation of limestones or sulphates, an anhydrite stockwork and a siliceous stockwork, grading downwards to quartz veins. Sulphides are mainly pyrite, chalcopyrite and sphalerite; gold occurs in the stratabound ores. Fluid inclusions measured in sphalerite, quartz, anhydrite and calcite show salinities between 2.3 and 5.7 wt% NaCl eq. and homogenisation temperatures between 177 and 300°C. Sulphides from the stratabound mineralisation display δ ³⁴S values of 0‰ to +6.0‰, whilst those from the feeder zone lie between −1.4‰ and +7.3‰. Sulphides show an intra-grain sulphur isotope zonation of about 2‰; usually, δ ³⁴S values increase towards the rims. Sulphate sulphur has δ ³⁴S in the range of +17‰ to +21‰, except two samples with values of +5.9‰ and +7.7‰. Sulphur isotope data indicate that the thermochemical reduction of sulphate from a hydrothermal fluid of seawater origin was the main source of sulphide sulphur and that most of the sulphates precipitated by heating of seawater. The structure of the deposit, mineralogy, fluid inclusion and isotope data suggest that the deposit formed from seawater-derived fluids with probably minor supply of magmatic fluids.  相似文献